Ontario chasing used car buyers who benefited from sales tax error

Ontario’s finance department says roughly 6,500 used car buyers are on the hook for sales tax they weren’t charged when they purchased used vehicles in May, 2015.

The provincial government is attributing the error to CarProof providing lower values than was reasonable for the affected vehicles. CarProof is a private contractor the government hired to assign resale values to used vehicles. Cars sold in May were mistakenly undervalued, and buyers were consequently not charged enough tax; most of the bills being sent to those used car buyers are for between $100 and $500, adding up to a total of $2.4 million in outstanding sales tax.

Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa called the mistake “unfortunate,” adding that the government has no choice but to collect the funds, even though the car buyers did nothing wrong. He didn’t say what it would cost to send bills to the affected car buyers.

“I acknowledge and regret that an isolated situation has unfortunately occurred due to a computer formatting error with third party data,” Sousa told the Toronto Star. “(It) has resulted in certain people being required to pay an outstanding balance of RST owing on their recent used car purchases, (but) I want to reiterate that this is an isolated incident and the ministry has taken appropriate steps to ensure that this does not happen again.”

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath suggested the Liberals “need to do a better job of keeping their eye on what the government and its private-sector service providers are doing. They farm out (these initiatives), don’t keep tabs on them, and something ends up going awry.”

Used vehicle buyers who receive a bill for outstanding sales tax can mail a cheque or money order to the Ministry of Finance, or pay in person at Ontario’s ServiceOntario locations.

Chris Chase

As a child, Chris spent much of his time playing with toy cars in his parents’ basement; when his mother would tell him to go play outside, he made car sounds while riding his bicycle or dug roads for his toys in the flower garden. Now he gets to indulge his obsession playing with real cars that make their own cool noises, and gets paid for it.

Is this a joke? Sales tax is calculated on the sale price, not on the estimated price. The government cannot mandate what price a vehicle sells for, and neither can CarProof.

guymacher

Fight this to the Supreme Court. The price is determined in the free market Time for the revolution!

Lee Grieves

Hey ms. Wynn. Send the bill to CarProof!. You hired them so there must be a contract! Hopefully you were smart enough to have a clause making them liable for errors! Unless of course you also own CarFax??

don684

Welcome to the wonderful world of Ontario under the tax it whatever way we want Wynne Liberals. Most corrupt & inept government Ontario has ever had .